If You Can’t Get Your Hands On Vintage, Consider These Lookalikes Instead

From Gucci to Fendi to Prada to Mulberry, the "old is the new" trend is showing zero signs of slowing down. More, we say, more!

by Team Yoyokulala | February 6, 2018

It is easy to understand the appeal of vintage things. You get a story out of it, a piece of history, if you will. There’s also that cool factor when you tell someone how you came upon it, like “Oh, it was my grandmother’s” or “Oh, I found it in this hole-in-a-wall store in Tokyo“. The fashion industry loves looking back at its long history and loves the product of it – i.e. vintage goodies – just as much.

Over a year ago, we reported on the growing “faux” vintage trend, where old was the new new. Gucci’s Alessandro Michele led the pack with t-shirts that looked vintage and sort of were vintage because as much as they were new, they borrowed logo designs from the 1990s that weren’t created by Gucci per se. We called it “vintage-ception”.

Fast forward several seasons later, the trend is more than alive and kicking. It is on fire. Designers can get enough. We can’t get enough. Everybody can’t get enough. Fendi brought back their classic brown-camel monogram in the form of tote bags and micro buckets. Gucci made cross-body bags reminiscent of those in the 1990s and early 2000s. Dior’s monogram, so popular in the previous two decades, is now back in full-force and we pine for it on the daily.

Saint Laurent’s latest Bellachasse and Opium bags, with their worn suede and seasoned hardware, look like they were plucked straight out of the 1970s. Prada took the idea one step further by covering bags in seemingly vintage comic prints. Balenciaga super-sized rings and earrings to 1980s proportions. Then, we have Mark Cross and Mansur Gavriel and these brands have always had a vintage streak in their signature bags.

Vintage is cool, but there’s something rather intellectual about a bag made to look vintage – not old – and inspired by an “imagined” archive. Plus, these lookalikes are far easier to get – well, if you’re quick and you can work your way ahead of the waitlist – and you know, won’t fall apart in two years because they’re new.